ABSTRACT
Gatekeeping practices typically segregate citizen content from professional content and, when non-professional images are incorporated into news narratives, emphasize journalistic authority over amateur visual material. The amateur videos provide vivid and disturbing accounts of actual terror and violence rather than the aftermath of the fighting. However, the videos are often made into professional content through editing by the wire agencies and newspapers, creating narratives with a beginning, middle, and end from activist clips and making them more understandable for domestic audiences using voice-over narration. The production and distribution of visual images from the Syrian crisis lay bare the interplay between professional news organizations and amateurs in a new system of networked information flow around the globe. The Syrian conflict has become a growing source of political discord within the country, as the main opposition party, the Republic People's Party (CHP), leftist and radical Islamist groups, and Turkey's large Alevi community have criticized the government's policy.
